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slut loved me, too." She sighed. "Too bad I had to kill him. He was going to tell the
sheriff all, and that would have spoiled my fun."
Bob John bristled. "Ask her."
"Ask her what?"
"You know. I heard it in your mind. Ask her about Dan. Was she doing that weasel
behind my back?"
"I heard you topped both of them, so what difference does it make?"
"She was mine, that's why. She only did Dan when I said so."
"Sounds to me like she was spreading herself around you , Dan, Mo, probably the
other criminals she dealt with."
"No! She was mine."
Obviously, Mo hadn't been the only man in Vanessa's warped world who liked to
think he was "the one and only".
"So, you fucked Dan when Bob John wasn't looking?"
"Sure, I did. And why not? I got tired of playing the submissive sex slave," sneered
Vanessa. "I have more power in my little finger than those weaklings had in their whole
ugly, merely mortal bodies." The dark witch radiated power. "My real lover, Warrick
Bettencourt, was killed by your coven, Brenna Lindsay. And for that act, each and every
one of you will pay!"
"You've got my help, white witch."
Brenna barely registered Bob John's acquiescence as Vanessa let loose a stream of
dark power in her direction.
As she moved to throw up a protection shield, she taunted, "Nice try, Vanessa. But
that's not my whole name. Try again."
Brenna whirled away in a controlled cloud of earth and water energy. She was close
enough to the glade to pull reserves from the scrying pond's static power. The air near the
glade remained under Vanessa's control and would not heed Brenna's call.
Vanessa screeched when her shot missed. "You lucky bitch of a witch. But luck
won't help you forever."
The dark witch hovered. Her eyes glued to Brenna, who used a temperature inversion
to bounce around the area like a dust devil on speed. Vanessa let off a surge of power
from time to time.
So far, she'd missed.
But, sooner or later, Vanessa would hit her. It was just a matter of time.
As she thought it, another bolt of ugly green energy came from the dark witch's
hands. It singed the edge of Brenna's twister, leaching some of the energy.
"Brenna!" Ty's voice called to her from a distance ... in the real world.
"No, Ty. Stay away. Get Drake and Rhea here! Go back."
Too late.
Vanessa had turned at the sound of Ty's voice and spotted him. He ran toward
Vanessa, who still hovered near the death tree.
As Vanessa turned her sights and magic on easier game, Brenna fumed. Where in
k
Hecate's Hell were the witch reinforcements?
She couldn't wait. Ty's entrance on the scene was a diversion, just not the one she
wanted.
Landing a few feet away from the tree, Brenna called out, "Vanessa. I'm over here,
bitch."
As Vanessa switched her attention back, Brenna sent Bob John a message: "A
distraction now would be good."
The area around the death tree grew darker as if someone had turned off the moon
and the stars in the night sky. The command of the winds was torn screaming and wailing
from Vanessa. Under the control of death now, the winds blew erratically, tossing the
living to the ground.
Sulfurous flames erupted from the tree, and the pattern of those flames outlined the
figure of a man staked to the mighty oak. His dead eyes opened in dark anguish, windows
to the infinite span of death. Windows to his immeasurable anger and need for
vengeance.
"Vanessa, you unfaithful bitch," roared Bob John's fiery ectoplasm. "You killed me.
And now you'll die."
"No! You're dead," Vanessa shouted from the ground where she lay. She shot her
particular brand of foul, negative energy toward the tree. "I consigned you to Hell. No
one returns from the lower regions. No one."
"Wrong, bitch." Bob John laughed, then launched himself at her in a flash of angry
flames.
At Bob John's distraction, Brenna crawled to Ty on the real plane. Reaching him, she
covered them both with a web of positive earth energy. Simultaneously, she projected
onto the astral plane and found Vanessa's astral self, also fighting Bob John's spirit.
"Brenna, can Bob John's spirit kill her?" Ty asked, as he held her in his arms under
the green-blue glow of the protection web.
"No. I have to," Brenna said. She laid her head on his chest and placed her hand over
his heart. She took strength from the love lying within that frail human organ. "I have to
kill the evil on the astral plane like Rhea did with Bettencourt."
"But she had the power of three," Ty said. "You're just one little witch."
"No," she kissed him, sealing his words. Projecting into his head, she continued as
she deepened the kiss, "I have the power of two and the knowledge of her full name. That
will do."
"Where are we?" Ty asked, as he looked around.
"We're on the astral plane. See? Bob John fights her astral body. If I can kill her
here, she will die on the real plane, also."
"Tell me what I need to do," Ty said.
"Just hold on and love me."
"Always," Ty breathed, as he took her into his arms on the astral plane.
Pouring everything she had into a stream of positive energy, she aimed it at
Vanessa's astral body. As the stream hit the dark witch, Bob John's astral body left the
plane, his job done.
Vanessa's astral body turned and sent out curling threads of dark gray and green at
Ty and Brenna's astral selves. While on the real plane, the dark witch pummeled the
protection web with streams of negative power.
Feeling the drain on her protection web, Brenna dug deep, and before her appeared
a golden glowing key. And next to it a locked box shimmered in all the hues of the
universe.
"Take it, my child," the Goddess said. "He's already given you the key to his heart
and soul. This is the key to his power, freely given. Take it. And use your combined
strength for only good."
"Forever and ever, so mote it be," promised Brenna, as she reached for the key.
"So mote it be," echoed Ty's projector as he placed his hand over Brenna's and
guided it to the box.
As they opened the lid, Vanessa increased the tendrils of evil seeking them out, but
the energy from the box burst forth in a thick stream of golden-white light that swirled
around, then vanished into Ty's astral body.
His arms tightened around Brenna. She felt his newly freed power. Better yet, she
could access it and did.
As they faced the dark witch together, they projected a stream of energy made up of
their combined potency. It shone ruby red and amber gold. and it was purely positive and
good.
"No!" screamed Vanessa. "You are only two. I sense no third. I will defeat you, and
corrupt your power for my own." She poured more negative energy from the universe on
both planes.
As the web of protection began to fail on the real plane, Brenna played her last card.
Using every atom of positive energy she and Ty could draw from the universe, she
countered the dark witch's power, then intoned:
"Vanessa Rhiannon Hardon, I consign thee to the furthest regions of Hell, never to
darken the real world or any world known to witch and mortal man again. So mote it
be!"
The astral plane shook and wavered with the force of the explosion from the meeting
of positive- and negative-charged magickal matter.
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